Charles Leclerc was incensed as cold tyre temperatures in the final stage saw Ferrari “throw everything in the bin” in qualifying at the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.
Leclerc, a renowned street track specialist, was considered a leading contender to acquire pole position at the Marina Bay Circuit as he ran Lando Norris close in FP2.
But while Ferrari’s promising practice pace dissipated in FP3, Leclerc appeared to be back in contention as he ended up third in Q2, one-tenth behind the leading time.
However, the Italian marque endured a nightmare in a disrupted Q3 as Carlos Sainz crashed while Leclerc’s sole attempt breached track limits, relegating him to ninth.
Even had his lap counted, Leclerc would have languished a disappointing seventh as he rued beginning his tour with his Soft rubber not up to an ideal operating range.
“Q1-Q2 was going well,” Leclerc told media including Motorsport Week. “I was kind of hopeful again after FP3, that went wrong.
“But then I got out of the box in quali three and the front tyres were way cooler. So, I don’t know.
“We do so much preparation all the weekend to get to this one lap in quali where we know it’s as important as Monaco.
“And we get out of the box and we are way too cold on the front tyres and that puts all of our weekend into a very bad place, so not much to say on that.”
The Monegasque would not be drawn on the specifics, but he indicated that the miscalculation with the temperature was substantial enough to have a huge bearing.
He added: “I’m not going to go into the detail of the numbers.
“It’s not exactly that, but obviously we are speaking about one-degree maximum, two degree to get it right or completely wrong.
“So it was more than that and there was nothing to do.”
Ferrari unclear on Singapore woes
Asked whether it was an operational call that caused the complication, Leclerc replied: “I don’t know. I have asked to the team in the in lap.
“I think the investigations are still ongoing. We don’t know the exact issue yet.
“But the fact is, we started the lap with two cold front tyres, locked up into Turn 1 and that was it. I never really had the front grip I wanted.”
Leclerc has denied that Sainz’s shunt as he prepared to embark on his initial lap in Q3 implied the Ferrari drivers were too marginal with temperatures on the out lap.
“I think we were in a good place,” he retorted. “We’ve been competitive also thanks to the good job we’ve done.
“But I don’t know what happened on my out lap of… not on my out lap, out of the box temperatures because it went all wrong from that moment onwards.”
Leclerc denies correlation between FP3 and Q3 issues
Meanwhile, Leclerc reckons the more competitive laps that he delivered in Q1 and Q2 demonstrated there was no correlation between Ferrari’s troubles in FP3 and Q3.
“In FP3 I was not happy with the car, but also, it’s very warm weather here, so I was expecting it to be not exactly where we wanted it to be,” he explained.
“But we were expecting to have a strong quali, which in Q1 and Q2 did confirm that we were in the pace to do a good thing.
“We throwed everything in the bin with the Q3 tyre temperature issues. So we’ve got to investigate that.”
Pressed on what could have been possible without the issue he endured, Leclerc suspects he could have split Lando Norris and Max Verstappen to claim second.
